Today's Opinions

By CHARLES HAYNES
First Amendment Center
In Judge Joseph Sheeran’s courtroom, religious literacy is seen as an antidote to intolerance and hate.
Last week, the Michigan judge gave Delane Bell two years’ probation for attacking two men Bell thought were Muslims. But the judge conditioned the sentence on Bell’s completing a 10-page paper on Hinduism, the actual faith of the assault victims.

I was sitting in my living room the other morning, gazing out at the fog that softened my ridge-top neighborhood. Suddenly, a bit of motion caught my eye, shaking me out of the morning mist that had also overtaken my brain.

A garden spider, golden orb or writing spider, as some people call them, dropped gingerly into one of my azalea bushes, then rose again, placing an anchor line for a more complex structure just out of view.

By DAVID L. HUDSON Jr.
First Amendment Center
East St. Louis, Ill., has a gang problem.

It may now have a constitutional problem as well.

Last week, Mayor Alvin Parks imposed a host of restrictions designed to curtail youth violence in his city. Among the most controversial — and likely unconstitutional — of the new rules is a ban on the wearing of royal blue or bright red clothing by men — regardless of their age. The colors are associated with gangs.

As a past participant in the Roane County legal system due to the murder of my daughter 16 years ago, I feel nothing has changed.

In fact, I feel things have moved backwards to the dark ages.

This summer, when Judge Eugene Eblen gave Shawn Smoot — charged with first-degree murder in the death of Brooke Nicole Morris — an opportunity to leave jail on bail, it was indeed a slap in the face of all those past and future women who have and will be murdered in Roane County.